Britain's Supreme Court upheld the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden over alleged sex crimes on Wednesday.
Seven judges at the country's highest court rejected by a majority of 5-2 that Assange's claim that a European Arrest Warrant under which his extradition is sought was invalid.
Two lower courts have already ruled he should be extradited. Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over claims of rape and sexual assault made by two female former WikiLeaks volunteers, and he has been fighting a lengthy legal battle against extradition since his arrest in Britain in December 2010.
It'll now go to some European Court of Even Higher Appeal which will take a decade or so to figure out whether Assange risks being tortured if he's extradited to Sweden...
The former computer hacker gained international prominence in 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing secret video footage and thousands of US diplomatic cables about Iraq and Afghanistan, in the largest leak of classified documents in US history.
That made him a hero to anti-censorship campaigners but a menace to Washington and other governments.
Assange also faced widespread criticism that he had put lives at risk by blowing the cover of sources who spoke to diplomats and intelligence agents in countries where it was dangerous to do so.
Since then, WikiLeaks has faded from the headlines due to a dearth of scoops and a blockade by credit card companies that has made donations to the site almost impossible. Assange's personal standing has been damaged by the Swedish sex case and he has lost support from most of his celebrity backers. Since his detention, he has mostly been living under strict bail conditions at the country mansion of a wealthy supporter in eastern England. His associates say that amounts to 540 days under house arrest without charge.
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
